Semiconductor manufacturers, electronics companies, and other entities routinely produce large numbers of integrated circuit products. During the fabrication or manufacturing process, these entities almost always wish to test the integrated circuit products being produced. These tests are often performed to ensure proper operation of the integrated circuit products and to ensure that the integrated circuit products meet desired or required specifications.
The testing of integrated circuit products has become more and more difficult as the speed of the integrated circuit products have increased and as the testing has become more complex. Also, the testing of integrated circuit products often involves the use of extremely expensive testing equipment. While it is possible for manufacturers and other entities to test every single integrated circuit product being manufactured (such as by purchasing a large quantity of the extremely expensive testing equipment), this testing is still usually very slow. For example, it can often take several seconds to generate test measurements for a single integrated circuit product, and the test measurements may not be repeatable.
Because of these and other problems, manufacturers and other entities often do not test a selected set of attributes for each integrated circuit product being manufactured. Instead, the manufacturers and other entities perform a theoretical analysis of the integrated circuit design, measure these attributes for only a small number of samples, and claim that these particular attributes of the product are “guaranteed by design” (rather than simply “guaranteed”). Obviously, purchasers of the integrated circuit products prefer that a product be “guaranteed” rather than “guaranteed by design” since “guaranteed” implies that all attributes of all products have been individually tested.